6 Ways to Foster Brain Health with Yoga

by Nina and Ram

Mademoiselle Ferrand Meditating on Newton by de La Tour

In his post Mental Exercise, Yoga, and the Perfect Brain, Ram mentioned six basic ways you can help prevent age-associated memory loss and foster brain health. Today I thought we'd look a bit closer at each of those ways, so if brain health is a concern of yours (and, really, who isn’t concerned about this?), you can target your yoga practice to help support your brain health as well as your overall health in general. 

1. Engaging in Physical Activity. Engaging in regular aerobic activity leads to structural changes in the brain that result in improved cognition. Physical exercise increases nerve branching and in some cases triggers regeneration of new nerve cells, especially in the memory centers of the brain. Physical exercises help you learn new things, and to be more alert and attentive owing to the structural changes. Scientists believe that physical exercise triggers increased blood flow to the brain. The greater the blood flow is, the more oxygen and other important nutrients that reach the brain, which may explain the cognitive improvements associated with exercise. Physical exercises will also help maintain optimal blood pressure, control diabetes and lower cholesterol levels, all of which are potential mental risk factors.

A regular, well-rounded asana practice provides an excellent form of exercise, fostering strength, flexibility, balance, and agility. But targeting cardiovascular health with your practice could be especially helpful for brain health (see About Yoga for Heart Health And Circulation). As Ram says, “What is good for the heart is good for the brain.” After all, your brain is one of the important organs of your body, just as your heart is.

2. Staying Mentally Active. Just as exercise and physical activity prompt muscles to grow stronger, mental exercise tones thinking skills and memory. Mental exercises maintain, build, and remodel neural network connectivity, trigger production of nerve growth factors that increase neuronal branching, and stimulate new synthesis of neural cells. The brain actively grows and rewires itself in response to stimulation and learning. Our brain grows stronger from use and from being challenged. This is called brain plasticity. Plasticity is the reason why stroke patients can relearn skills after a brain damage and also explains how a healthy part of the brain might assume the job of a damaged part. The brain is continually morphing/re-sculpting itself in response to new experience and learning. The greater the neural density, stronger and more resilient is the brain and mind that keeps the physical body strong, in turn promotes healthy aging.

According to Baxter’s post How Yoga Sequences are Brain Aerobics, to be a “brain aerobic” an activity: needs to engage your attention, must break a routine activity in an unexpected, nontrivial way, and must involve more than one of the senses. So practicing yoga asana mindfully, which not only engages your attention but involves more than one of your senses, can meet all three of these requirements if you intentionally keep your practice varied (see Practicing Yoga Mindfully and Stuck in a Rut?). Meditation and pranayama can also meet these three requirements, again, if you vary the practices. See How Yoga Sequences Are Brain Aerobics for more ideas. And, of course, simply learning new yoga poses and practices, and studying the scriptures (see The Power of Svadhyaya, Part 2) provide excellent learning opportunities.

3. Being Socially Active. Social engagement reduces the risk of isolation and depression. Remaining socially active also supports brain health and delays the onset of dementia. Because being socially active requires that you plan, participate, engage, and be attentive and alert, it qualifies as mental exercise. Social engagement is also a learning exercise for the brain and mind. As with other mentally stimulating activities, social activities help build up healthy brain cells and the connections between them.

Attending yoga classes and participating in your local yoga community is a good way to stay socially active as well as to keep your practice going strong. See 8 Ways to Join the Yoga Community for more ideas. You can even practice yoga with one or more friends (see Practicing Yoga with a Friend).

4. Eating a Healthy Diet. High blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol are potential mental risk factors and increase the risk of dementia. A healthy diet helps to keep these factors at optimal levels. Some of the consequences of chronological aging are increased oxidative stress, free radical production, and uncontrolled inflammation that not only hasten aging but also trigger rapid brain aging. A healthy diet soaks up free radicals and brings down inflammation, thus preventing brain decay. Eating a healthy diet promotes good blood flow to the organ system, which includes the brain.

Practicing yoga stress management techniques improves digestion, prevents stress eating, and reduces cortisol levels. Cultivating mindfulness with meditation and asana practiced mindfully can help make you more aware of what your body really needs (and what it doesn’t). And using your meditation practice to strengthen you will power will help support you in changing your eating habits. See Yoga for Healthy Eating: An Overview for further information. 

5. Managing Chronic Stress. Chronic stress (see About Stress: Acute vs. Chronic) causes havoc not just to the body but also to the brain. Chronic stress brings with it several health issues, including constant fear, worry, anxiety, depression, and memory deficits. 

While stress hormones do sharpen attention and spur us to take needed action, we are not designed to handle high levels of stress hormones day after day, year after year. In the brain these stress hormones weaken blood vessels, kill off neurons, and shrink the hippocampus, resulting in memory loss. Chronic stress also speeds up the normal aging of other cells that in turn affects normal structure and function of the brain.

Using yoga’s stress management techniques help you dial down stress levels when you are suffering from chronic stress (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga). Cultivating equanimity in the face of life’s difficulties will help you from getting stressed out in the first place (see 7 Ways to Cultivate Equanimity with Yoga). 

6. Sleeping Well. Lack of sleep or sleep deprivation triggers accelerated mental decline. Sleep appears necessary for our nervous systems to work properly. Too little sleep leaves us drowsy and unable to concentrate, and leads to impaired memory and physical performance. If sleep deprivation continues, hallucinations and mood swings may develop. Just as sleep gives the body time to heal itself, sleep allows neurons to lower down their neurochemical activity and repair themselves.

Without sleep, neurons become “fatigued” and begin to malfunction. Sleep helps to clear out toxins from the brain as well as from the body (see Sleep, Alzheimer's Disease, and Yoga). Finally, the brain gets exposed to thousands of stimuli through the five senses, and sleep helps to reduce chaos and bring order to the information flow, helping to put an order to these information inputs and archive them as memories. 

Yoga can be really helpful for improving sleep because you can use it to manage your stress levels and reduce anxiety, both of which are frequent causes of insomnia (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga and 10 Ways to Soothe Anxiety with Yoga). If pain or physical discomfort is keeping you awake, you can use yoga pain management techniques (see Yoga for Pain Management). And soothing practices, such as restorative yoga and simple, calming forms of pranayama, can help you if you wake in the middle of the night. See Yoga for Insomnia, Part 1, Day to Night: Yoga for Better Sleep, and Five Tips for Better Sleep for further information.

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